Goza's Wanderings and Wonderings: Oddfellows and Sunsets

Location: Liberty Hill Campground (COE); Dawson, Texas. About an hour south of Dallas.

This is my third time to this campground because it seems to be perfectly located on my travels from Central Texas back to Louisiana. I've also been pretty lucky at seeing some descent sunsets here. I had thought my last visit would have been my final one but after leaving I found out about a place that I should have explored. I promised myself I would return. This visit is keeping that promise.

This is serve as the road picture. I think they were harvesting winter wheat, but not sure.

There was one other camper on this peninsula. He was a 75 year-old guy with one leg. He promised his doctor when he lost his leg several years ago that he would go camping by himself when he was 75. The was tent camping in a blow-up tent with a portable A/C unit inside.

Nice campsite with water/electric. Those two things in the distance are thinking benches.

From the thinking benches looking back toward Freedom and Liberty

These were reclined thinking benches. They were surprisingly comfortable.

I noticed the 75 year-old packing up to leave. That was a surprise because he said he was leaving the same day as me. I walked over and he said his wife had called an their granddaughter had a program the following. This was already late in the afternoon. I thought I may offend him by offering to help his pack up be he was very grateful. He said he could do it himself but that it would take he several hours. I said no problem and we had him on his way in a short-short.

On my last visit, while exploring the small town of Dawson, I was told about a building that was built by the Independent Order of Oddfellows. I think it was an orphanage, but not sure. I had never heard of that organization, so I did some minor checking into it, but only minor, since I had already moved west. I did learn that the Texas Grand Lodge for the Oddfellows, with a museum, was located in Corsicana, about 30 minutes from the campground. If I had known, I surely would have went. As I promised myself years ago, I returned to explore the Grand Lodge/museum and learn a little more about the organization with the strange name.

The Oddfellows is a fraternal organization whose motto is Friendship, Love, Truth. If you see three interconnected circles with FLT, then it's an old Oddfellows building. By the way, they are not associated with the Masons, Shriners or other such organizations. It was formed in the U.S. in 1819 and grew to over 3,000 lodges throughout the country. One of the things that interested me the most was their work in building and maintaining orphanages. At their peak they ran 62 of them in the U.S. and 72 worldwide. The Grand Lodge of Texas was the Administration building for the local orphanage, school and old folk's home. It included dormitories, classrooms, a dairy, power plant and was an independent school district within Texas. It closed in 1991 after having cared for over 5,500 kids.

If you're curious like I am, I wondered when orphanages were phased out. Come to find out, the Social Security Act of 1935 provided funding for the Foster Care system. Once that happened, it was only a matter of time before orphanages closed down. The number of kids in Foster Care peaked at about 567,000 in 1999. Currently, it is about 350,000. It's unclear to me which is the better program but since Foster Care is now basically the only show in town, I sure hope someone is vetting the heck out of Foster Care Parents. It is worrisome to hear about rampant fraud in many of the federally funded programs.

The Oddfellows fundamental missions are to "elevated the character of mankind through humanitarian efforts, including visiting the sick, relieving the distressed, burying the dead and educating the orphaned." During my former career, I learned to recognize "weasel words", but I get good vibes from their mission statement. 'Nuff said!!!!

This is a picture in the Oddfellows museum showing how large their facility was in the day. Impressive.

In case you thought they were "warehousing" the orphans, this is a picture of the orphanage. Pretty ornate and fancy, uh?

One of my favorite reasons for traveling is to find and learn about things like the Oddfellows. I considered myself blessed to be able to see and learn things while I still can. I can do that without traveling, but traveling just exposes more things in some great places. If you really want to go down a rabbit hole, google "orphan trains".

Camping on this peninsula puts you in a good position to see some nice sunsets. Here are two from the first two days here.